— Justinian (@JustinianNews) November 6, 2024
Hansard, Votes and Proceedings, Motions, Wednesday 14 February 2024:
Assange, Mr. Julian Paul
Mr WILKIE (Clark) (16:48): I move:
That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the following:
(1) the Member for Clark moving:
That this House:
(a) notes that:
(i) on 20 and 21 February 2024, the High Court of Justice in the United Kingdom will hold a hearing into whether Walkley Award winning journalist, Mr Julian Assange, can appeal against his extradition to the United States of America;
(ii) Mr Assange remains incarcerated in HMP Belmarsh in the UK, awaiting a decision on whether he can be extradited to the USA to face charges for material published in 2010, which revealed shocking evidence of misconduct by the USA; and
(iii) both the Australian Government and Opposition have publicly stated that this matter has gone on for too long; and
(b) underlines the importance of the UK and USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr Assange can return home to his family in Australia.
(2) debate on the motion being limited to the mover, seconder and two other Members;
(3) speaking times being 10 minutes for the mover and five minutes for all other Members speaking;
(4) amendments to the motion not being permitted; and
(5) any variation to the arrangement being made only on a motion moved by a Minister.
The SPEAKER: Is the motion seconded?
Mr Josh Wilson: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.....
(Speakers to the motion were Andrew Wilke MP Independent, Josh Wilson MP Labor Party, Bridget Archer MP Liberal Party and Adam Paul Bandt MP The Greens. All spoke in support of the motion)
The House divided. [17:20]
(The Speaker—Hon. Milton Dick)
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DIVISION: AYES 86 (44 majority) NOES 42 PAIRS 0
| Right click on image to enlarge |
Question agreed to.
By the time Word War II drew to a close 77 years ago the world geopolitical map saw Australia identified not just as an existing state within the United Kingdom's wider economic zone, but as a prospective permanent political and economic client state of other Big Powers. Its natural resources to be harvested by fossil fuel corporations & extractive industries, exploited by foreign investors and its population a reliable supplier of future cannon fodder in support of their individual and sometimes joint global ambitions.
For her part, Australia would present as obligingly grateful for being treated as a commodity 'owned' by the wealthy top percentile of the northern hemisphere and the largest transnationals.
Nothing much appears to have changed since then…..
The Saturday Paper, 7 January 2023:
A United States congressional committee investigating fossil fuel disinformation has published internal documents on a major Australian fossil fuel project – described by energy multinational Chevron as “an Australian icon” – in what has become the investigation’s final publication before Republicans took control of congress on Tuesday.
The second and final memo, released by the US house oversight and reform committee, includes information from internal documents subpoenaed by the committee about Chevron’s plans to extract gas from its Gorgon project on Barrow Island, off the coast of Western Australia, beyond 2056. The committee included Gorgon as an example of how the industry is “doubling down on long-term fossil fuel investments” while publicly claiming that gas is “merely a ‘bridge fuel’ ” to cleaner energy in spite of scientists’ “significant concerns about continued reliance on natural gas in a warming climate”.
The committee released memos in September and December last year, alongside thousands of pages of internal documents subpoenaed from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute. A sixth subpoena issued to the American Chamber of Commerce did not result in any documents being provided.
The two memos include references to the Australian activities of three of the four big oil companies it investigated – BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil – however, the December 2022 memo includes a particularly detailed focus on the Gorgon project, a joint venture led by Chevron, with partners including Shell and ExxonMobil.
According to the committee, the documents reveal that Chevron “is prepared to swoop in and expand its own fossil fuel business … even if other companies ultimately agree to reduce oil and gas production …”
In total, more than 200 of the 589 pages of Chevron documents published by the committee in December relate to Chevron’s operations in Australia, although many are covered almost completely by black boxes. The documents include a heavily redacted 179-page binder provided to Chevron board members visiting Australia and the Gorgon project in 2016, including details ranging from cultural advice on how to order a flat white to information on Chevron’s long-term ambitions for what it is describing as the “largest single-resource development in Australia’s history”.
According to the committee, internal documents shared with the board by then chief executive John S. Watson “emphasize” Chevron’s “long-term intentions for [Gorgon], despite climate concerns” and “the profits Chevron predicts it will reap”…...
Of the unredacted pages related to Chevron’s Gorgon trip, some are less pertinent than others. A cultural information section explains how light mocking should be considered “friendly banter” and not “an insult”. A rare unredacted section of the agenda shows the executives, directors and spouses were scheduled to receive a two-hour overview of Australian politics from Peter van Onselen, who is introduced as contributing editor at The Australian.
The December 2022 memo was not the first time the Gorgon project attracted the committee’s attention. Its September 2022 memo noted a carbon capture and storage facility at Gorgon that had “repeatedly failed to meet its storage target by about 50%” as an example of problems with that technology.
Another Australian example included in the December memo relates to BP’s strategies towards working with regulators here. A 2016 email from a BP executive to John MingĂ©, chairman and president of BP America, compares the company’s mindset in engaging with regulators in countries including Australia, the US and Germany.
The email describes how BP had gained an “advantaged position” with the regulator of its Australian oil refinery by engaging “proactively”. According to the internal memo, BP documents provided to the committee “show BP executives acknowledging that the company’s actions are often obstructionist towards the development of climate policy”.
Overall, the internal documents, along with further scientific sources cited by the memo, reveal that many of the public claims made by fossil fuel companies have been intentionally misleading.
As the committee’s then chair, Carolyn Maloney, said at a hearing in February: the investigation revealed that ExxonMobil scientists knew about the dangers of fossil fuels in 1978, and in the decades since, the fossil fuel industry has “waged a multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign” to prevent climate action, “all to protect its bottom line”…..
On December 25, journalist Amy Westervelt reported that, contrary to previous plans stated by the committee during its term, the December 9 memo may be the last document it publishes.
That same week, the new chair of the Democratic minority in the house oversight committee, Jamie Raskin, shared that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma.
The committee’s work being abruptly curtailed after only 18 months contrasts with the long-term time scales of the companies it is investigating, such as Chevron’s plans to secure profits beyond 2050. The Saturday Paper put a request for comment to Chevron but did not hear back before going to press.
Although the committee’s investigation is on hold, the US is significantly in front of Australia in its attempts to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
Last month, Puerto Rico became the latest US jurisdiction to file climate accountability lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, joining dockets filed by seven US states and at least 35 municipal governments.
Puerto Rico – an unincorporated territory of the US in the Caribbean, where storms made worse by climate change have caused major recent disasters – is the first to use the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in its climate fraud case against Shell and other companies.
According to Wiles, it could be a “big loss” for these cases if the million pages held by the committee “never see the light of day”.
“The documents that have been released so far definitely provide new evidence on the side of the plaintiffs against the defendants.”
In Australia there are currently at least two court cases related to so-called greenwashing making their way through courts, including one case lodged by the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility.
In 2022, two Australian regulators, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, announced plans to investigate greenwashing using existing laws.
Considering the memo’s revelation that BP has internally described its more proactive approach of working with regulators in Australia, it is unclear to what extent regulators alone can address the industry’s influence…..
BACKGROUND
North Coast Voices:
Friday, 6 January 2023
Monday, 2 January 2023
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| https://www.sea.museum/explore/maritime-archaeology/deep-dive/finding-endeavour |
In 1788 during the American War of Independence a British troop transport & prison ship believed to have once been styled His Majesty’s Bark Endeavour was deliberately sunk along with six other vessels across the outer entrance to Newport Harbour, in an attempt to stop America’s ally France from taking possession of the town during the Siege of Newport.
The graveyard of these wrecked ships were rediscovered in modern times and are now the subject of archeological investigation begun in 1993 on what is a complex site. The Australian National Maritime Museum has been part of on-site investigations for the last four years.
Approximately 15 per cent of one particular wreck is relatively intact while the remainder of that ship lies scattered across one section of the seabed to the north of Goat Island. It is now known as RI 2394 and is possibly Lieutenant (later Commander) James Cook's former command
HMB Endeavour.
It appears that prior to being scuttled RI 2394 was stripped of all fixtures of value and thus has no clear identifying features remaining except for its now predominately disconnected broken timbers.
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| Part of what Australian authorities believe is James Cook’s famous vessel. IMAGE: ABC News |
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| Pre-disturbance mapping of RI 2394 The Search for Capt. Cook's Endeavour in Newport Harbour Dr. D.K. Abbass PhD in The Redwood Library & Athenæum Magazine ETC., Winter 2019 |
To date RI 2394 has only been identified as "the most likely to be the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®". A sufficient level of archeological findings has not yet been produced.
Nevertheless, the federal government owned Australian National Maritime Museum – one of the research partners in the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project apparently decided sometime between 1- 2 February 2022 to issue a media release which resulted in similarly worded articles being published online by the The Senior, Daily Liberal Leader, Shepperton News, U.K. Daily Mail, and Australian National Geographic on 3 February 2022.
Australian Community Media’s Daily Liberal Leader, 3 February 2022:
British explorer James Cook's ship Endeavour has been identified after languishing in US waters for more than two centuries.
Cook famously sailed the ship around the South Pacific before landing on the east coast of Australia in 1770.
Australian National Maritime Museum CEO Kevin Sumption announced that after a 22-year program of archival and archaeological research, "we can conclusively confirm that this is indeed the wreck of Cook's Endeavour".
"This is an important moment," he told reporters at National Maritime Museum in Sydney on Thursday.
"It is arguably one of the most important vessels in our maritime history."
The ship played an important role in exploration, astronomy and science and was an important artefact in the history of Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and now the US, he said.
A "preponderance of evidence" had led to the conclusion that an archaeological site known as RI2394 in Newport Harbour, Rhode Island, "does indeed comprise of the shipwreck of HM Bark Endeavour," he said.
Since 1999 maritime archaeologists have been investigating several 18th century shipwrecks in a two square mile area of Newport Harbor, Rhode Island.
The Endeavour was scuttled there by the British 244 years ago and lay forgotten for more than two centuries.
Although only about 15 per cent of the vessel remains, several details on the wreck convinced archaeologists they had found Endeavour after matching structural details and the shape of the remains to those on 18th century plans of the ship.
Communications Minister Paul Fletcher applauded the discovery, saying it fulfilled the museum's mission to record and display the story of Australia's maritime heritage.
"What the museum has done ... over 20 years to verify the location of the vessel ... is of extraordinary importance", he said…… [my yellow highlighting]
However, this ‘historic’ co-announcement by the National Maritime Museum and the Morrison Government appears to be somewhat premature as I can find no published record of Mr. Sumption's confirmed discovery claim*, nor did he cite any publication date. It seems he was in something of a rush to inform the world.
*It should be noted that in his LinkedIn entry Kevin Sumption lays no claim to having qualifications directly related to archeology or to having been employed as an archeologist. His skills lie in museum management, planning, projects & exhibitions.
And then there is this......
STATEMENT FROM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR - D.K. ABBASS PhD:
February 2, 2022
The Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) report that the Endeavour has been identified is premature. The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP) is now and always has been the lead organization for the study in Newport harbor. The ANMM announcement today is a breach of the contract between RIMAP and the ANMM for the conduct of this research and how its results are to be shared with the public. What we see on the shipwreck site under study is consistent with what might be expected of the Endeavour, but there has been no indisputable data found to prove the site is that iconic vessel, and there are many unanswered questions that could overturn such an identification. When the study is done, RIMAP will post the legitimate report on its website at: www.rimap.org. Meanwhile, RIMAP recognizes the connection between Australian citizens of British descent and the Endeavour, but RIMAP's conclusions will be driven by proper scientific process and not Australian emotions or politics.
One can’t help but suspect that there is one particular person who will be disappointed in how the National Maritime Museum's announcement is going down.
That person is Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison, the well-known fan of all things 'Captain' Cook & Endeavour.
Who it happens is also a prime minister in search of feelgood election campaign stories which might allow him to bathe momentarily in a little reflected glory.
Now faced with the prospect that quite a few voters might believe that this particular 'historic' Endeavour announcement was a somewhat hysterical attempt on the part of PMO staff to present a different media narrative in order to paper over the very recent revelations that certain members of Morrison's own party see him as “a horrible, horrible person”, “just obsessed with petty political point scoring”, “a complete psycho”, “desperate and jealous”, and that “the mob have worked him out and think he’s a fraud”.
"In an extraordinary diplomatic feat, Morrison has somehow managed to have China, France and the United States offside simultaneously. It’s an outstanding trifecta, when the Chinese refuse to talk to you, the American President thinks you are a boofhead and the French President calls you a liar." [ Journalist Niki Savva, The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 November 2021]
"He has sacrificed Australian honour, security and sovereignty. Now that is a shocking thing for an Australian Prime Minister to do." [Former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull, ABC Radio National interview with Sabra Lane, 3 November 2021]
“If only we COULD move on from Morrison, the colossal hole he has created in our ability to defend ourselves in coming decades, or the damage done to our global reputation. His is shaping up as not merely the most corrupt government in federal history, but the most disastrous.” [Crikey journalist Bernard Keane, on Twitter 4 November 2021]
On 19 April 2021 at the Business Council of Australia Annual Dinner Prime Minister Scott Morrison informed the world that; “We are going to meet our ambitions with the smartest minds, the best technology and the animal spirits of our business community. We need to change our energy mix over the next 30 years on that road to net zero emissions…..It will be achieved by the pioneering entrepreneurialism and innovation of Australia’s industrial workhorses, farmers and scientists.
It will be won in places like the Pilbara, the Hunter, Gladstone, Portland, Whyalla, Bell Bay, the Riverina. In the factories of our regional towns and outer suburbs. In the labs of our best research institutes and scientists. It will be won in our energy sector. In our industrial sector. In our ag sector. In our manufacturing sector. That’s how you get to net zero.
It would appear that his first step on this journey is to make a token investment in ‘clean’ energy by way of $539 million in funding for new projects involving hydrogen product and capture & storage, which will apparently be fuelled by both black and brown coal – thereby increasing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions Australia releases into the atmosphere.
This folly was pointed out by ABC News on 21 April 2021:
Getting hydrogen into a pure, useable form takes a lot of energy and this process can produce a lot of emissions.
And so, that is why experts talk about different types of hydrogen — brown, black, grey, blue and green.
Only "green" hydrogen is produced entirely through renewable power and has zero emissions. The others use electricity made by coal (black or brown) or gas (grey), sometimes with carbon capture and storage (blue).
The Government call its hydrogen plans "clean" — a combination of hydrogen from gas and renewables.
The Climate Council says the term is "misleading" for average Australians.
Its website states: "Proponents of fossil-fuelled hydrogen have used this to describe fossil fuel hydrogen linked to carbon capture and storage, as well as renewably sourced hydrogen."
"Only the variety of hydrogen generated with renewables … belongs in our zero emissions future."….
The government insists real progress is being made on CCS technology.
However, many climate scientists believe, when it comes to fossil-fuel energy production, CCS is not a serious alternative to wind and solar power.
Some, like the Climate Council, see it as an attempt to prolong the use of fossil fuels.
"The Gorgon CCS trial has been a big, expensive failure. It is capturing less than half the emissions needed to make CCS viable," the Climate Council's website states.
"CCS is extremely expensive and cannot deliver zero emissions."
"There are still no successful projects operating anywhere in the world."
While The Guardian on April 2021 published these telling quotes:
Harry Guinness, a former Liberal adviser and chief executive of the centre-right thinktank the Blueprint Institute, said the US was planning to spend about 35 times what Australia allocated in the last federal budget on green stimulus, and the government would need to commit to serious finance if Australia was to make a transition to net zero by 2050 as Scott Morrison has said is his preference…..
“Our friends and allies are going to want to see tangible commitments. They’ve been quite clear about that, it’s no mystery,” Guinness said. “If we are in the game of bringing technologies down the cost curve we need finance and incentives, including pricing carbon. Actions speak louder than words.”
Tony Wood, the Grattan Institute’s energy program director, said there was little detail in what the government had announced on Wednesday, making it hard to assess, but that Australia was spending significantly less on hydrogen than some other countries.
He said Australia was also offering support for hydrogen made with fossil fuels where others were backing “green hydrogen” made with renewable energy only.
“I don’t see any evidence that Australia has developed positions that are leading the world,” he said…..
Announcing the funding on Wednesday, Morrison said hydrogen was “zero emissions gas”.
The Greens said as the government planned to support hydrogen made with fossil fuels as well as renewable energy its commitment was “just more cash for coal and gas”. The party’s leader, Adam Bandt, said it paled next to multibillio-dollar green hydrogen commitments by other countries including South Korea, Germany, Spain, France, Japan and Saudi Arabia.
“This government’s obsession with coal and gas is about to cost Australia as other countries invest heavily in green hydrogen, giving them the edge as future markets open up,” Bandt said. “With all our wind and sunshine, this is Australia’s competitive advantage to seize, but it is being lost.”…..
Richie Merzian, the Australia Institute’s climate and energy program director, said it appeared the government was “once again using climate action to support fossil fuel companies”. He said that under current commitments it was possible by 2030 the US would have halved its emissions and the UK cut its emissions by two-thirds but Australia was sitting on a 26% cut while still subsidising fossil fuels…..
I was talking to a public servant climate policy in his portfolio the other day who said 'at least when we were in enviro (dept) we felt like climate policy might relate vaguely to the environment. Now we're just the department for coal and gas. No ones even pretending anymore '
— Polly Hemming (@pollyjhemming) April 21, 2021
Morrison must think the Australian electorate and every OECD government around the world are so monumentally stupid as to not realise that these announcements (and their lack of detail, fuzzy timelines or no guaranteed funding) are solely for the benefit of US President Joe Biden 's two-day virtual Leaders Summit which began on 22 April 2021, with a weather eye out for the twelve-day UN Climate Change Conference (COP 26) to be held in Glasgow during November 2021.
By the time all his half-promises and evasions concerning zero emissions have failed to meet the 2050 target date, Scott Morrison will be 81 years of age and I will be long dead - having lived all my life in a country which only genuinely attempted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for six short years between June 2007 to September 2013.
Crikey, 12 January 2021:
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| SCOTT MORRISON AND DONALD TRUMP (IMAGE: AAP/MICK TSIKAS) |
Donald Trump may have lit the match that caused his country’s turmoil, but it was Rupert Murdoch who crammed the joint full of explosives.
His systematic manipulation and radicalisation of the American right-wing polity at large, and the Republican Party in particular, should ring alarm bells throughout our nation, including in the office of the prime minister.
Over the past 25 years, Murdoch has used his Fox News network to unite American conservatives under his banner and shift them from the centre right to the far right with an intoxicating diet of grievance-driven, race-fuelled identity politics.
By the time Trump announced his presidential campaign, these voters had been indoctrinated into a universe of “fake news”, “alternative facts” and elaborate conspiracy theories. The operational definition of fake news, in the eyes of the Trump presidency, became anything other than Fox News.
After some initial disagreements, Murdoch backed Trump all the way to the White House. And they kept in lockstep throughout the Trump presidency.
Trump would often repeat publicly the talking points he’d picked up from Fox. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker, recommended booking interviews on Trump’s favourite shows as among the most effective ways of communicating directly with the Oval Office. And nothing delighted Murdoch’s swaggering ego, hard-right ideology and business tax interests more.
Fox covered up for Trump’s mistakes, trying desperately to keep track with his shifting claims about the mildness or severity of the coronavirus.
When Fox’s news reporters found nothing newsworthy in documents relating to Joe Biden’s son Hunter, Murdoch’s New York Post (under the watchful eye of his leading Australian henchman Col Allan) swooped in by pressuring junior reporters to put their names to its dubious front page story.
Like Trump, Murdoch’s news outlets also gave succour to the dangerous QAnon cult, with the devastating consequences witnessed in Washington last week.
It is now beyond time for Scott Morrison to stand up and denounce QAnon before it can fully take root here in Australia. Even if it strains the prime minister’s personal friendships with members of the far right, he should send the sort of crystal-clear signal that Trump proved himself unable to before it was too late.....
Read the full article here.
Personally, I believe it is too late to save Scott Morrison from himself. He lacks the ability for genuine self-examination.
Morrison was always attracted to Donald Trump, as one flimflam man often admires another more successful confidence trickster.
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| SNAPSHOT: Peter van Onselen |
Scotty from Marketing has clearly drunk the QAnon-Trump Kool Aid, wrapped himself in his personal closet racism, his foreign Legion of Merit medal and those evangelical & pentecostal contacts he appears to prize above the interests of the Australian nation, so that he is now willingly protecting those members of his own government who are just the sort of greedy, self-interested, ignorant crazies who have driven American society into the ground.
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| ANU Australian Centre On China In The World, 15 October 2019 |
From the moment Donald Trump was elected US president Scott Morrison has aped his caps, lapel pin, hand gestures, clumsy megaphone diplomacy and verbal aggression towards China.
Who will Morrison ape now that Trump is a spent force awaiting an ignoble departure from the White House in January 2021 and how will an incoming Biden Government see Australia?
This is a snapshot of current American opinion of Scott Morrison and his government.....
New York Times, 1 December 2020:
At a time when Australia’s favored nation status with the Trump White House is about to expire, there is widespread concern that a Biden administration will focus less on America’s Pacific partners and more on rebuilding ties in Europe. That has pushed Australia deeper into a position of pleading for help in corralling China even as it beats its chest for sovereignty.
“On one level, the prime minister’s reaction was completely reasonable. On another, it’s at the upper limit of what’s acceptable without making things worse,” said John Blaxland, a professor of international security at the Australian National University. “He’s got to tread a very fine line because Australia’s leverage is limited.”
David Brophy, a senior lecturer in modern Chinese history at the University of Sydney, said it had created a counterintuitive dynamic. China often condemns Australia for doing America’s bidding, when, in fact, Australia is trying desperately to cajole the United States into deeper engagement.
“The American presence in Asia is more important for Australia than it is for America,” Brophy said. “When Australia sees any hint of withdrawal, as we saw at the beginning of the Trump administration, it stirs up this sense of panic. It’s not enough to wait for the U.S. to get back in the game; Australia has to show it can do more and will do more.”
Increasingly, that has meant tolerating economic pain and abandoning the approach that Australia has long followed with China — say little and do what must be done. Morrison’s government and China’s propaganda machine have instead been trading blows and turns at the microphone.
Geoff Raby, a former Australian ambassador to China, described it as a self-perpetuating cycle of paranoid provocation.
“They are each confirming the other’s worst suspicions,” he said.
Whispered complaints are out, replaced by competing news conferences and laundry lists of grievances. Australia has launched two foreign interference investigations with high-profile raids. It now plans to file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization over China’s blocking of barley imports — one of many products that China has rejected as tensions have soared.
University Wire, 1 December 2020:
While China and Australia have always been close trading partners, Australia has also been the key United States ally in the region - accommodating a significant American military presence and hosting an intelligence facility at Pine Gap. A senator even demanded that Chinese-Australian politicians denounce the CPC to prove their allegiance to the country.
The relationship between Canberra and Beijing has deteriorated after Australia pushed for an worldwide inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus in April without consulting Beijing, widening cracks in the relationship that had been growing since Canberra banned China's Huawei Technologies Co. from helping build its 5G telecommunications network two years ago.
In September two senior Australian reporters, the last in China working for Australian news outlets, left the country abruptly after being questioned by Chinese officials. This economic recovery development strategy could allow China to buy considerable amounts of Australian goods.
But it does feel a *little* bit rich to be demanding an apology over the post when, as far as I can see, Scott Morrison hasn't issued an apology to the families of those who were allegedly killed.
"As a warhound of the US, Australia should restrain its arrogance. Its politics, military and culture should stay far away from China - let's assume the two countries are not on the same planet", the paper argued. "Particularly, its warships must not come to China's coastal areas to flex muscles, or else it will swallow the bitter pills". No matter what harsh words people use on them for the murder, the Australian government should have accepted it.
Earlier this month, China outlined a list of grievances about Australia's foreign investment, national security and human rights policy, saying Canberra needed to correct its actions to restore the bilateral relationship with its largest trading partner.
New York Times, 2 December 2020:
For the past few years, Australia has positioned itself at the front of a global effort to stand up to China. It was the first country to ban Huawei's 5G technology, to pass foreign interference laws aimed at curbing Chinese influence, and to call for an international inquiry into the source of the coronavirus.
Now, Australia is sounding an even louder alarm. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, already vexed by China's blockade of Australian imports -- wine, coal, barley and cotton -- demanded on Monday that the Chinese government apologize for a lurid tweet showing an Australian soldier with a knife at the neck of an Afghan child. The world, he warned, was watching.
But even as he elevated a Twitter post to a four-alarm diplomatic fire, he also called for a reset with Beijing, reiterating that Australia's end game was still "the happy coexistence of two partners." In that somersault, Mr. Morrison inadvertently let the world hear Australia's internal dialogue of doubt -- one that echoes around the globe as China increasingly asserts its might.
The prime minister gave voice to the insecurities and anxieties that come with being caught between two superpowers. Those jitters are partly about the limited options in the face of China's tightening vise. But they are also about an America in flux.
At a time when Australia's favored nation status with the Trump White House is about to expire, there is widespread concern that a Biden administration will focus less on America's Pacific partners and more on rebuilding ties in Europe. That has pushed Australia deeper into a position of pleading for help in corralling China even as it beats its chest for sovereignty.
"On one level, the prime minister's reaction was completely reasonable. On another, it's at the upper limit of what's acceptable without making things worse," said John Blaxland, a professor of international security at the Australian National University. "He's got to tread a very fine line because Australia's leverage is limited."
The country's entire history since settlement has been shaped by unquestioned dependence on an alliance with a distant and dominant power, first England, then the United States. The prospect of an end to that stability, with American decline or indifference and Chinese dominance, fills most Australians with dread.
Voice of America News, 2 December 2020:
On November 17 Tokyo and Canberra agreed to negotiate the Japan-Australia Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA), the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on its website. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was visiting Tokyo then to meet his counterpart Yoshihide Suga. Japan has no similar deals with any country besides the United States.
The two leaders issued a joint statement that omitted China by name but condemned its activities in the South China Sea, where Beijing took the upper hand in a six-way sovereignty dispute after landfilling islets for military use through 2017.
"The [leaders] had serious concerns about the recent negative developments and serious incidents in the South China Sea, including continuing militarization of disputed features, dangerous and coercive use of coast guard vessels and 'maritime militia', launches of ballistic missiles, and efforts to disrupt other countries' resource exploitation activities," the statement said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian slammed the statement as "a gross interference to China's internal matters."
But Beijing cannot cast the Australia-Japan pact as explicitly anti-China, said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. "China would of course not like it, but China could not argue that it is targeting China," Oh said. "Any two countries could sign this kind of thing. A third country could not say 'it is targeting me.'"
U.S. officials, conversely, will probably smile on the Australia-Japan deal because Washington wants its allies to help with pro-American causes in Asia, said Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo.
The U.S. government periodically sends navy ships to the South China Sea, upsetting Beijing, and offers weapons to Asian countries for their defense against China. Beijing maintains the world's third strongest arms forces. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has taken on China as well over trade, technology access and consular issues.
"The fact that Australian troops can come and base here and engage in more frequent and probably deeper bilateral training with Japan and of course with the United States, because the United States is already based here, this creates more interoperability," Nagy said. "It creates a more cohesive bilateral and multilateral partnership to push back against China."
The reciprocal access agreement will mainly smooth drills and training between countries that already work together militarily, scholars say. Japanese already visit Australia for military training, for example a long-range howitzer firing exercise last year.
The two sides can learn more from each other on amphibious operations and explore areas for joint development such as long-range strike capability, Davis said.
"The significance of the RAA cannot be understated," Morrison said in a statement in November on the prime minister's website. "It will form a key plank of Australia's and Japan's response to an increasingly challenging security environment in our region amid more uncertain strategic circumstances."
CNN Wire Services, 2 December 2020:
Canberra's tensions with Beijing may also cast a shadow on the recovery. Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Frydenberg called the dispute with China a "very serious situation."
"China is our number one trading partner. Many Australian jobs rely on trade," he said, adding that Australia is looking for free trade agreements with other partners around the world — including the European Union — in an effort to reduce the risk.
"I'm very optimistic about the opportunities for our exporters around the world," Frydenberg said.
Economists, meanwhile, say the ongoing trade spat hasn't yet escalated to the point at which it poses a real threat to Australia's economy.
Relations have been deteriorating since Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic in April, a move that Beijing called "political manipulation."…..
Politico, 3 December 2020:
The wolves come home to roost. On Sunday, Chinese diplomat (or is that “diplomat”?) Zhao Lijian managed to turn hostilities between Beijing and Canberra up yet another notch when he shared a graphic illustration on Twitter depicting an Australian servicemember gleefully cutting the throat of a small Afghan child. Australia’s defense minister had released a report on Nov. 19 recommending 19 Australian soldiers be investigated for what it called the “murder” of 39 civilians and prisoners in Afghanistan. Australian PM Scott Morrison promptly demanded an apology for the image, but he got the opposite. “Do they think that their merciless killing of Afghan civilians is justified but the condemnation of such ruthless brutality is not?” spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a Monday presser.
— Nationalistic Chinese netizens were excited by the row, lauding Zhao for “standing up and speaking up against the enemy,” reports China Watcher’s Shen Lu. Many raved about Zhao’s “agenda-setting capability” on the international stage. The creator of the image Zhao posted, who calls himself a “wolf warrior illustrator,” quickly followed up with another creation:
This one, which appears to depict a press corps more interested in a violent painting than a battlefield, has received over 546,000 likes and counting. But in posts that censors later deleted, Chinese critics said they believe Zhao does owe Australia a mea culpa, and delivered a reminder that Zhao used to go by Muhammad Lijian Zhao on Twitter while he was a diplomat in Pakistan.
— Meanwhile, incoming Natsec adviser Sullivan sure seemed to subtweet Zhao when he wrote Wednesday on Twitter that America will “stand shoulder to shoulder” with Australia, “as we have for a century.” It’s another important signal that Beijing won’t get a reset on its terms.
Univesity Wire, 3 December 2020:
The Australian government was among a number of Western countries that have called for an investigation into the origin of the Coronavirus in Wuhan. Two days later, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the World Health Organization needed the powers of "weapons inspectors" to get to the bottom of what happened in Wuhan.
What followed led to a diplomatic row and a souring of relations between the two countries not seen before - a row that reached a crescendo this week when Mr Morrison demanded an official apology after a graphic slur about Australia's alleged war crimes by a Chinese official on Twitter.
